The national curriculum is set to be made more ‘diverse’ under Labour plans – oh, and every school will have to teach it. The Telegraph has more.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has begun a review to “refresh” what is taught in schools, pledging to “breathe new life into our outdated curriculum”.
The new curriculum will be compulsory in all state schools, including academies that were previously free to opt out.
The Telegraph can reveal that the Department for Education’s terms of reference for the overhaul explicitly say that the department (DfE) aims to create a curriculum that reflects the “diversities of our society” and help produce young people who “appreciate the diversity” of Britain.
This newspaper has also seen suggestions for changes to the curriculum that have been submitted to the review by unions and other teaching groups, including for how to “decolonise” subjects which have been branded too “mono-cultural”.
The moves were criticised by the Conservatives on Sunday night. Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said: “Instead of spending time fiddling with our academic curriculum, which has led to English children being the best at maths and English in the Western world, the DfE needs to concentrate on getting absence rates down and kids back in the classroom.”
Sir John Hayes, the former Conservative education minister, said the changes would “undermine the education of young people” for ideological reasons.
He added: “The truth of the matter is there’s a canon of English literature, there’s a factual basis to learning, and you can’t twist the facts to suit your political agenda.
“When you do you risk undermining the education of young people and leaving them ill-equipped for life beyond schooling.”
Sir John, who trained as a history teacher, warned that the move would add to the “distortion of history” for political reasons, adding: “The pretence that some things count and others don’t – that’s just not intellectually rigorous.”
The review, announced in July, is being led by Prof Becky Francis, a feminist professor who started a call for evidence in November urging teaching experts to offer proposals on achieving the aims of the curriculum overhaul.
Prof Francis, who criticised the Tony Blair government for “an obsession with academic achievement”, and the committee leading the review are now considering proposals suggested by teaching unions, school groups, think tanks and Royal Societies.
After a review of the evidence, an interim report is expected to be published in early 2025. A full set of recommendations to curriculum changes will be released later in the year.
Among the proposals submitted by major unions and educational institutions are suggestions of the introduction of more diverse material, particularly in “majority white” classrooms, and a move away from English literature which is seen as “traditional”.
The teachers’ union NASUWT, which has about 280,000 members across the UK, told the review that it must “embed anti-racist and decolonised approaches” in the curriculum and advised “inclusive curricula that reflect diverse authors, cultures and perspectives”.
The Association of School and College Leaders warned that “history and English curricula are seen as largely mono-cultural”, and welcomed plans to “diversify the curriculum”.
The group, which represents more than 25,000 senior secondary school teachers, warned that “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation are under-represented in the national curriculum”.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) told the review that the planned curriculum must reflect “the diversity of our society”, adding that members saw the benefit of using diverse reading material for “subverting racial biases” especially when “teaching to a majority white classroom”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Bridget Phillipson has been accused of “gaslighting” middle-class parents after claiming that they support Labour’s private school tax raid. The Telegraph has more.
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I fully subscribe to the notion that if you make allowances for anything but merit then standards will slide… But… I would like to understand what the pro-DEI crew would say about this. I assume they’ve got a perspective… Whether I believe it or not.
Combination of deluded utopianist useful idiots, grievance grifters and evil manipulators who will say “because racism” – some of them believe it, others just pretend.
Equity = equality of outcome. If all fail then that’s equity.
It is absurd to claim or at least to imply that every racial group has the same intelligence. You can’t exert some policy and make it so. I think they want to say that the underperformance of some groups is due to socio-economic factors and this of course is a factor but the whole picture goes way beyond that.
It is not simply a matter of degree of intelligence, it is how it is or can be used and that involves a number of factors the most pertinent being culture.
Pakistanis and Indians are racially the same but culturally different. It is that difference which explains the disparity in academic, social and economic progress between the two populations.
Britain started the Industrial Revolution – why not France, Germany? Same racial stock, plenty of intelligent people in the three Countries. It was cultural.
Although it is worth considering North Korea and South Korea in terms of IQ disparity.
DIE (die-whitey and go-away Asians) is part of the ideology of the New Dark Age. One of its more nonsensical components is that education administrators imagine they possess a magisterial wisdom which allows to correct “social errors” which produce differential educational outcomes. Essentially, they believe in magic, and they behave like witches.
I always think it’s a lot more about how it makes them feel than any real world outcomes
Off-T
https://x.com/myhiddenvalue/status/1838699486958571987
Dr Sherri Tenpenny discussing the “Pact for the Future” document which was recently given silent approval by 193 nations at the United Nations. The aim is to digitize everything on the planet.
A short video. Two minutes. Harrowing stuff.
Not much use if you don’t have enough electricity
There are all sorts of complexities that aren’t considered by narrow-minded people. For example the reason that Indians are so clever with language is due to the depth and complexity of Sanskrit and also its close relationship to English. Do you think these policy makers bother ith things like philology. The same goes for the relationship between Persian and English which is very profound. They know nothing.
In our time there is a simple test to see if someone is useful. If they have a love of poetry and song and beauty in general then they are useful. If not then they are part of the enemy and problem. In essence already dead. Just look and ask if they can invoke a mood and a magic and a calmness. If you can’t do it yourself then you are already destroyed and utterly useless.
Overseas student applications have dropped dramatically in this country. You can understand why. You sold your higher learning to the highest bidder and now everyone avoids it because you turned it into a cheap whore.
DIE in name; DIE in nature.
Hiding in plain sight, it be their [Karma].
Shouldn’t the student population match brain power, not who has the best tan?